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California YIMBY Joins Sen. Wiener to Launch 2021 Legislative Housing Package

Statewide Housing Advocates, Equity Leaders Join the Call for More Homes SACRAMENTO – Today California YIMBY joined State Senator Scott Wiener (San Francisco), along with housing and equity advocates from across the state, in launching a package of bills in…

Did Displacement Play a Role in California’s COVID-19 Surge?

For the past two months, Southern California was America’s COVID-19 epicenter. Throughout the month of January, someone in Los Angeles County died every six minutes from COVID-19 related complications. The pandemic ravaged the Los Angeles area to such a degree that air-quality…

Black Housing Heroes: Tia Boatman Patterson

I have experienced everything from homelessness to homeownership. I grew up in public housing with a single mom who purchased her first home through a first-time homebuyer program in the mid ’70s. It used to be that a single woman…

The Elements of Housing Elements: A Phase Change to Greater Production?

Recent reforms to California’s Housing Element Law may change political incentives in municipal governments to permit more housing production as a default stance, with the cover of state regulators forcing their hand. That’s the compelling analysis offered by Elmendorf et…

Parking Requirements are a Mandate for Expensive Housing

An abundance of academic literature strongly suggests that parking requirements hurt American households by raising the cost of housing and increasing demand for automobile travel by artificially lowering the cost of car storage. Essentially, by reserving land for parking irrespective…

How Many New Homes Should California Build?

With each passing year, California’s housing crisis has grown worse. Past decisions by our state’s cities and counties to reduce the number of homes it is legal to build have caused high rents, low affordability, and an exodus of middle-income…

Onwards towards justice: Our statement on the violence in DC, the Fair Housing Act, and the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

This Saturday, January 16th, marks the 54th anniversary of the introduction of the Fair Housing Act in Congress, a federal law that legally ended the common practice of racial, ethnic, and religious discrimination in housing.* The law was a monumental…

The Little Engine That Could (Fund Itself)

Can public transit fund itself by building housing on its land? That’s the fundamental question Common Ground California asks in their new white-paper, “Transit Value Capture for California.” The idea from authors Derek Sagehorn and Joshua Hawn is simple: public…